


Princess Valiant

by Varghona



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-12 19:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9087214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varghona/pseuds/Varghona
Summary: Scenes from Leia's life.





	1. Fort Valiant

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of Carrie Fisher.
> 
> It was going to be a one-shot and now I have multiple chapters dancing through my head. Damn it.

Leia's favorite spot in the Royal Gardens is a small rock grotto hidden in a towering golden pine grove. It's well off the neat, manicured pathways; no graveled maintenance roads lead to it; her parents never showed it to her and it certainly never rates a mention by any of the official tour guides who lead daily tours of the Gardens, which are open to the public so that Alderaanians and off-planet visitors alike may enjoy the famous botanical, sculptural, and architectural wonder (and, occasionally, a glimpse of the Royal Family).

Even at five years old, Leia's smart enough to figure out that nobody's supposed to go here. Which makes it a great place to build her secret fort.

(Also, the grotto itself, with its cairn of stones and the trees outside like silent sentries, is a mystery that sets her imagination afire.)

She plans carefully. Over a period of weeks, minor items go missing from the palace: a pair of worn blankets with holes in them, a wine-stained throw pillow, a packet of fig cakes, a few bottles of carbonated lemonade. Fort Valiant takes shape in the little grotto, manned by the plas-toy soldiers that Leia adores and her royal Aunts hate to see her playing with. Leia doesn't see why it's un-Princesslike to have toy soldiers. She knows their names, each one of them, and knows all about their families too. Father says a true Princess knows and cares about these things. 

Leia's mistake comes when it begins to get cold, and she sneaks a portable heater out to Fort Valiant. It's a small unit, old and battered, but its absence is noted. From there it's only a matter of time before the outside world discovers Leia's secret hideaway.

Luckily it's Father who does the discovering. He approaches respectfully, striding through the grove of pines with his hands open and raised to chest-level, as if he were carrying an invisible something in tribute.

"Hail, Fort Valiant," calls out Prince Bail Organa, His Serene Highness, First Chairman and Viceroy of Alderaan. "Can you spare refuge for a weary traveler?"

(Many years later, Leia reflects that Father must have spent at least a few hours watching her in secret, learning the game, before he interfered. When she tells Luke about this story, he laughs and says "Uncle Owen would've torn through like a sandstorm and dragged me home so fast, I would've come right out of my shoes.")

Father spends another few hours with her in the grotto, cross-legged on the cold, mossy stones, helping Leia and the defenders of Fort Valiant survive an attack from the Dread Space Pirate Roberts. Eventually the story is played out, and even brave Princesses must take a snack break. Leia shares her (growing stale) fig cakes and two precious bottles of lemonade.

"I see the Dread Space Pirate Roberts isn't the only one who's been raiding," Father says, accepting the lemonade and cake but partaking of neither one. His tone is good-humored though, so Leia isn't afraid. The stolen heater rattles, strained on its highest setting; the grotto does not hold heat well, and the heater only radiates warmth for about a meter.

"Funny about that," Father says, gesturing at the heater with his lemonade. "Rhys the stable manager had a heater just like that one in his office and it vanished a few weeks ago. Would you know anything about that, Leia?" And he gives her the look that lets her know that he knows the truth. (A lawyer's trick, and a senator's, she learns later--never ask a question on challenge that you don't already know the answer to.)

"It's just an old heater. I heard Rhys complaining about it," Leia replies.

"Ahhh. So you thought you'd do him a favor and take it off his hands." Father quietly sets the unopened bottle of lemonade and the uneaten cake aside. "You're right, he did complain, and he did put in a requisition for a new one. But until then, this was what he had to hold him until the new one arrived, and his office was very cold for a few days. It was bad for his old joints. Why should you sit here and play in the warmth while he had to work in the cold because you took something from him?"

When Father puts it that way, Leia feels very small indeed. "I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to hurt Rhys."

"I know you didn't mean to, sweetling. But you hurt him anyway." Father points at the food and drink, the blankets, the cushion. "And I know you thought these things were old junk and nobody would miss them. Maybe they didn't miss them. But those are bottles missing from the kitchen's inventory, and somebody has to account for them. Same with the packet of cakes. Same with the blankets and the pillow. Somebody, somewhere, has to account for them. And when things vanish? It just makes trouble for those people." Father gives her another look, and there's no hint of a smile now on his handsome face. "A Princess must always, always, look out for her people. Stealing from them, and making their lives harder, is not looking out for them."

Leia looks at the untouched drink. _Stolen,_ she repeats in her mind, and she realizes that's why Father didn't taste it. He wouldn't partake of stolen goods, even from his own kitchens. "I'll bring it all back and say I'm sorry," she tells him, contrite.

"Well, now, some of the cakes are gone, and Rhys already has his new heater...I think perhaps a better way to make amends would be help Rhys in the stables one day? And then maybe help the kitchen staff another day, and Housekeeper Lidia another. I've been meaning to schedule a few chores along those lines anyway. A Princess should know how much work goes into running a household. And be able to take care of herself." Father smiles and boops Leia's nose with his index finger, a gesture that makes her feel warmer than the space heater ever did. She agrees readily to Father's solution. It will be more interesting than practicing her calligraphy, and it will make her Aunts simply _furious._

That's always a plus.

There's just one thing though....

"Father, can I still come back and play here?"

Father hesitates, looking around the grotto. Leia waits, feeling his discomfort with the question. Somtimes that happens, when she asks questions people don't want to answer. She can sense their reluctance--feel them fumbling for the words they're willing to part with, like a miser in a mummer's play poking around in a pouch for the smallest coins available.

"What is it you like about this place?" Bail Organa says at last.

Leia screws up her little face, thinking it over. It's her turn to search for important words. "It's peaceful," she says. Then clarifies: "It's a _good_ place."

"It _is_ that." Father says this readily, which Leia finds strangely disappointing. Part of her was hoping there was some profound dark curse, or legends of bloody murder.

"And it's secret. Nobody knows 'cept me, and now you."

"Ah, well, not quite...it's just that maintenance doesn't come out here very often."

"What is it then? Why doesn't anyone come to visit?"

"Well, sweetling, it's a shrine. A memorial for the Jedi who designed these gardens."

Leia looks in dismay over at the small cairn, and the bottles of lemonade balanced on the flat rocks forming it. "You mean there's somebody's ASHES under there?" She peers at the rock pyramid with morbid excitement. This is so gross. And awesome.

Father laughs. "No, nothing like that! You see, when Jedi died...peacefully...their bodies just sort of vanished. Poof. Nothing left to burn or bury." His laughter is short-lived though, and he gets that look, the sad one.

Seeing Father's sad look always makes Leia sad herself, so she tries to distract him with questions. And it's stuff she's really curious about, now that she knows the truth.

"Who was she? What was her name?" Leia is sure the Jedi landscaper was a lady, because girls get things done. Father is the exception to this rule.

Father shrugs. "Well, we don't know. All we have in our records is that she lived here after her retirement. She had a lifelong enthusiasm for botany and architecture, and she designed the oldest section of the gardens here. The gazebos, the peristyle, the sculptures are all her designs as well. At the end of her life, she left a statement that she didn't want to be remembered by her name--just by the beautiful things she left behind."

"I knew it had to be a girl," Leia says smugly. 

Father gives her that fond, bemused smile of his. "If you like coming out here, I don't see why you should stop. Just remember to be respectful."

"I will, Father. This is my most favorite place."

"All right then, Princess Valiant. I think it's getting to be about time for us to head back home. Say goodnight to the troops."

Ten years later, while studying the history and design of the Royal Gardens in depth, Leia discovers that, at least according to the records, there is something under the cairn after all--the Nameless Jedi's robe and lightsaber. Rather than being upset with Father for not telling her the whole truth, she laughs. He was wise not to tell her, for her five-year-old self would have torn down the cairn at the first opportunity, and lightsabers and five-year-old children are a terrible combination.


	2. Dream Sequence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What dreams haunt Leia's childhood, and do they come through the Gates of Horn, or the Gates of Ivory?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to Neil Gaiman, my hero. (At least Cain and Abel don't make an appearance.) The Gates of Horn and Ivory are his.
> 
> Also, Mahler would totally be an Alderaanian composer.

The Gates of Horn and the Gates of Ivory stand between the waking world and the realm of dreams. True dreams pass through one, lies through the other. Every Alderaanian child knows this. The hard part is telling which one is which.

Leia knows you're supposed to talk with grownups when you're scared or you have a problem, but sometimes that doesn't help. It's Leia's first inkling that sometimes the people you trust to be in control are really just holding on for dear life on the same runaway speeder that you are. No matter how kind or wise they are, they don't know everything.

"I had the bad dream again last night, Mama," she tells Queen Breha. 

It's just after sunrise, but already her mother is hard at work, tapping away briskly on a datapad while three separate desktop screens flash with information: a news summary of the latest Galactic events, an investigative report on a charitable organization, and a biography of the Alderaanian composer Mahler. The Queen has a presentation to prepare for a class she's going to teach in just a few hours, but she sets her datapad aside and gathers Leia onto her lap.

"Was it the same one, darling?"

Leia hugs her mother tight, comforted by the solid feel of her arms under those voluminous velvet sleeves. Leia hides her face against Mama's neck, breathing her in. Mama always smells nice, like vanilla. And she's always so calm about things, even when Leia is bad and has temper tantrums.

(The six-year-old Princess is much-loved around the Royal palace, but her quick temper is already legendary.)

"Tell me what happened. It's only a dream, it can't hurt you." Mama is so calm and steady. And that too is comforting.

"It was _the bad dream_ ," Leia repeats. That's her name for it. _The bad dream._ And it's always the same. There's a pretty lady with dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. She looks so much like Mama that Leia sometimes thinks she is Mama. The pretty lady in the dream is crying, crying as if her heart is broken. And it must be broken, because then Leia sees the pretty lady dead in a carriage drawn by white gualaars. White flowers are all in her hair, and thousands of sad-faced people line the streets as her carriage passes by. She must have been someone important--a Queen.

"I'm scared, Mama, I don't want you to die and leave me," Leia says.

Breha strokes Leia's hair, gently combing the sleep-tangles out with her long fingers. She doesn't laugh at Leia's fears. "I'm not going to die for a long, long time," Breha says firmly. She doesn't say she won't die, because that would be a lie, and Alderaanians do not shield their children from the facts of life; they teach their younglings that death is inevitable, and what matters is how you live. "Believe me, nothing will take me away from you until you're a woman grown. Probably with children, maybe even grandchildren of your own by that point. No, don't worry about that dream, darling. It comes from the Gate of Ivory. It's not true."

Leia knows her mother isn't lying. She _feels_ it. 

But at the same time, she _feels_ that her mother is wrong, too.

 

"I had the scary dream again," Leia whispers to Father, after she wakes screaming from a nap and her screams bring him running to her room. "The one with the fire, and the man all burned up in the fire, and his terrible red eyes."

Leia has as morbid an imagination as any spirited child, but the scary dream with the burned man is a bridge too far. She doesn't dare speak of it out loud--just in whispers. To speak of it out loud would be to invite it in, like calling a demon in a story. She can smell his burning skin (for years, she refuses to eat pork), smell the sulfur from the broken crust of the charred black ground, feel the waves of heat coming from the viscous glowing red lava only meters away from her. She wakes in a sweat, even though the window to her room is open and her curtains blow lazily in a cool Springtime breeze.

She can feel her legs burned away. She has to touch them to make sure they're still there, and for a fleeting moment there's even pain...before it all fades away.

"It's okay, sweetling," Father whispers. "It's okay. It was just a dream."

Later, after he has the nanny droids bring her a drink of ice water and change her sweat-soaked sheets, Bail Organa sits down with Leia and they speak in whispers again.

"Now listen to me carefully, Leia," he says, and she knows this is Very Serious, the way he uses her name. "Because I'm going to give you a weapon for you to use against the burned man."

That gets her attention, you bet. Leia takes another gulp of ice water and sets her goblet aside, leaning forward, listening as close as she can.

"The burned man is a messenger from the Gates of Horn. He's true, but not the way you think. When we have nightmares, it's our sleeping minds telling us about the things in ourselves that we're afraid of. The next time you see the burned man, you tell him that he has no power over you and you're not afraid of him."

They talk a little bit more, mostly about things that scare or anger Leia, but Bail admits a few of his own fears to her as well. Fathers aren't perfect after all. The talk does help, and Leia resolves that next time she will face the burned man and tell him to go away.

It takes a few tries. She dreams of the burned man a few times after that. The first time, she almost forgets what she was supposed to do, but she manages to stutter out the words of defiance (or at least she thinks she does, it's hard to tell in dreams). It's easier the second time around. The third time, she faces him with more composure than ever before and finds pain and grief in his red eyes, along with the rage and hate that's usually there.

She really doesn't remember any incidents of the dream after that, and it fades away into that catalogue of dream memories from childhood.

It's just as well. Because she _feels_ that even though Father was right about how to handle her fear, he was wrong about what the dream meant.

More...she _feels_ he wasn't quite telling the whole truth. And that troubles her.

 

Then there's the sad dream. She calls it the sad dream because it makes her sad when it ends and she has to wake up.

Leia doesn't tell either of her parents about this one, even though it comes to her often.

There's a desert, vast and red under two suns. There's a boy. He looks like he might be her age, but he's dressed in the strangest clothes--ill-fitted, made of coarse, undyed cloth. His sun-bright hair is shaggy, and his eyes are the same color as the cloudless blue sky over the desert. 

He smiles at her, and Leia wants to stay with him forever here in the desert. Or bring him back home with her, to show him wild-running streams and snow-capped mountains. It doesn't matter where they are, so long as they're together. Every time she wakes from that dream, she cries a little--and she's angry too, feeling as though something precious and profound has been taken from her. 

 

Eventually all three dreams fade and stop coming to her, as she turns seven and begins training in earnest for her duties.


End file.
